But Warner Brothers isn't the owner of the copyright to the Middle Earth setting and they're the ones trying to sue to claim they are. They are ONLY the owners of the copyright to movie adaptations of of the Middle Earth Universe, and the video games *based on the movies themselves* through an agreement with the caretakers of the J.R.R. Tolkien estate. The J.R.R. Tolkien estate is still the copyright owner of the setting itself.

Warner Brothers would only have a valid argument if they were trying to claim that a video game constitutes a movie. As long as the developers of this go to the original books as source material instead of using the movies as source material, Warner Brothers wouldn't have an argument (although the Tolkien estate could, but they're not the ones doing the lawsuit).

I personally believe it's a change in how people view copyright law and it's upholding. It's a changing moral, and sometimes companies go overboard.

And if Copyright law, at least in my opinion, was upheld as it is now back when Thomas Edison was alive, he wouldn't have been able to market any of his products because he used other people's ideas. And in your words, that's illegal.

The biggest thing Edison took was the idea for the lightbulb. Yeah, he improved it. However, by your definition that is bad and illegal. There would be no creativity then, no one could build off of one another. Because it was originally someone elses idea. Also, Nikola Tesla forever.

It's because of the greediness of corporations like the RIAA and MPAA that angers people. They demanded 65 Trillion Dollars from the now defunct Limewire. They were trying to get money for each individual download that was done. That's more money than EXISTS IN THE WORLD. Luckily the Judge wasn't dumb and didn't grant all of that to them. They only got the amount for each song, not individual downloads.

If that isn't greed and abuse of the copyright system, I don't know what is.

Edit, more dirt against Edison.

""Keep on the lookout for novel ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you’re working on." - Thomas Edison.

Inventions that were not his ideas
1. The Electric Bulb or Incandescent Lamp
2. The Electric Chair
3. The Movie Camera
4. The Power Generator
5. X-Ray Photographs (fluoroscope)
6. The Storage Battery
7. The Record Player
8. Wax Paper
9. The Telegraph

Strange, looks like most of what he's known for...

TL;DR don't act like a shining knight of Copyright and Patent systems. Not every infrigiment is "stealing", and the Supreme Court of the US recognizes that as so.

And if Copyright law, at least in my opinion, was upheld as it is now back when Thomas Edison was alive, he wouldn't have been able to market any of his products because he used other people's ideas. And in your words, that's illegal.

This is a patently false interpretation of copyright law, Edison, and Edison's business practices.

has not Apple just done Samsung for copying the basic idea for their iPhone???

Thank you for providing us with such an easy example of why you're wrong. Apple sued Samsung for merely using a similar user interface, NOT for copying any actual methods to achieve it. That would be akin to Mercedes Benz trying to sue Ford for daring to switch his horseless carriages over to also using wheels to steer with instead of a tiller like his first model did.

You also tried to dishonestly pretend that this is an issue where people of a young age disagree with copyright law because of new technology exposing them to breaking it all the time when actually those of us who remember old-time copyright law dislike the way it's being used now precisely because if the ways it *HAS* changed in modern times.

Under the laws that existed at the time he wrote it, J.R.R. Tolkien's copyrighted work would have already entered the public domain by now. Copyright durations have been paradoxically lengthened in an age where technology moves even faster and thus the reasonable duration of useful exclusion should be even LESS not more. Lord of the Rings would BE public domain already were it not for what Disney lobbyists did to copyright law.

The person who wrote Lord of the Rings is dead. Arguments about whether or not copyright protects the creators of content are therefore moot. The creator of the content won't earn a dime from anything that happens today. It's only by the insane extension of the length of copyrights that this is even an issue at all. This isn't J.R.R. Tolkien trying to retain ownership of his own content. This is a movie company trying to retain ownership of his content they purchased from the caretakers of his estate long after he was gone.